Talk on legal implications of GRA - at Reading Uni 29/10/18

[ContessaGoesMarchingDOWNTOHELL]

I should have advertised this to you lot and am kicking myself! It's today at 5pm, Chancellor's building, G03. I will take notes and report back!

Young woman talking (student?) about showing her parents a trans kid in a video and about her difficulty in understanding legal issues around it

If so few people now ID as women, can't we just allow the law to deal with them? Measure this against difficulties trans people experience each day

Rosemary: many people have raised this, that we need to make life easier for trans people. She's not sure this is the case anymore. What is a woman's body, exactly?

Agrees with Christina about toxic masculinity and why men might want to escape that. Talks about control of patriarchy.

Disagrees about 'wrong body' narrative. Says we need to get away and work about social media narrative

Rosa: this event meant to be much bigger ad include range of voices, but they got 'stonewalled', basically

Very pleased with Rdg Uni and HOD

Rosa says it's the first time any uni has done this

Thanks for updates. Really sad not to have been able to get there. Any protestors outside?

Discussion where they dispute the 'born in the wrong body' narrative being popular

Christina talking about people not being trans at birth, but slowly realising they identify with other gender role over time

Finds shoehorning of all people into one of two genders baffling

Talks about how we are treated according to our bodies - this links to 'born in wrong body' narrative, but from other direction as it were

Talks of difficulties of fitting into your society if you don't fit the roles, and the lure of transition if so

Talks of prejudice still happening

Cross with trans lobby for fighting women instead of the govt

Says transpeople can't dictate what women, who are also oppressed, need to put up with

Student question about how you can feel like a woman if you've not been female all your life; is societal oppression the problem? Are people IDing as women just for the gender expression perks rather than due to feeling like women?

Julie: job of feminism is to say "We are human beings"

Takes a pop at Butterfly then says it's not to discourage people living as they do but just to say DO AS YOU LIKE and realise you are perfect as you are

Christina: it's not always as easy as just being a feminine man. Doesn't always make so much effort these days, but used to. The stares and negative attention dragged her down - societal influence punishing.

Women acted like they could escape gender roles back in the 70s - seems to not happen now. Feminism has receded and so women take individual action now; men have only ever had individual action to take.

Never had body dysmorphia until she realised penis was in the way

Question/statement about Butterfly - trans lobby using it as propaganda

Very against the narrative of it

Another comment: liked Julie's point abiut the oppression of being female. It's even before you're born

Form should follow function; if we're going to change the law, what do you want the law to actually do?

The aim seems to be to get males in with females. That's not good.

People should just live how they like, dammit.

All done now. Phew!

This is great, thank you!

How did the audience take it generally? The questions/comments sound positive.

They all seemed pretty on board. No protesters outside either!

I was amused by the toilets, which seemed pretty much what we want to achieve

Sadly DH and I had to race out to recoup children from kind babysitting friends, so didn't get to have interesting chats with them all

Thanks Contessa.

Have a gold star the live stream!

That sounds very positive OP. Thank you for the live posting.

That's brilliant. Thank you

It sounds s if there were some really good speakers there - and courageous - though what a dreadful situation we're in that we have come to think of someone as "brave" for speaking about women's concerns and rights.

That's fantastic.

It feels like we've been asking for debate for over a year now and met nodebate nodebate nodebate and suddenly we're at the point where a debate is beginning to happen. I've felt that with the BBC lately too, and the guardian, although they both still have a lot of catching up to do.

What could we have achieved by now if they'd just met with us instead of thumping one of us last September?

There are lots of academics being harassed and abused by students at the moment, including Rosa. In one case an academic has been forced from her job. I'm hopeful that now the consultation deadline has passed things will slow down, people will take the time to think a bit more clearly and ALL the grown ups in academia, whatever their opinions on this issue, will stand with their colleagues and help head off the woke cultural revolution. After all, it may be their brand of wrong-think that is punished next.

Who's the middle toilet for? They've been literally erased

Cleaning store I think!

They did have one person drop out at a very late stage and the remaining 3 were asked to try and cover the material they would have spoken on. I think they managed pretty well, considering!

Sounded really interesting. Thanks for the posts

It sounds like some great talks. But I'm disgusted that no academics who argue for self Id would speak. It's dereliction of duty. We pay for a class of professional thinkers to work through these difficult things and contribute light to the national conversation. If they won't come together with people with a different view and argue their case what is the point of them? The no debaters are non debating their way out of a job by undermining the whole purpose of the academy.

Thanks for live posting this Contessa. Wish I'd known it was happening- sounds like a great event.

HUGE HUGE THANKS - really fascinating reading this

Thanks Contessa! I'm v impressed with the uni for doing this (which is depressing in equal measures).

Massive thanks for this Contessa